Yesterday, Vice President Mike Pence reaffirmed President Trump’s intention to create a new entity to safeguard America’s myriad, vital security interests in outer space. He set a deadline of 2020 for the establishment of a separate armed service called the U.S. Space Force.

This is an important step towards properly understanding and addressing the reality that, from now on, space will be a battleground. Protecting our equities there fully, however, is going to take more than a new military branch.

As the Heritage Foundation’s Dakota Wood notes, the U.S. government has some sixty agencies with “ownership of the space issue” including our access to, exploration and use of the “high frontier.” Retired Marine Lieutenant Colonel Wood suggests that another armed service, the Coast Guard, may provide a model for integrating these key military and civilian functions under an effective management structure.